needle

When Arya stabs Raff the Sweetling in TWoW sample chapter “Mercy” she uses a “long thin blade” that was evidently hiding up her sleeve:

Raff the Sweetling looked up sharply as the long thin blade came sliding from her sleeve. She slipped it through his throat beneath the chin, twisted, and ripped it back out sideways with a single smooth slash. A fine red rain followed, and in his eyes the light went out.

This is not the first long, thin blade we’ve seen Arya with. Both text and symbolism strongly hint that the blade that does Raff in is none other than Needle, last seen being hidden under a loose stone on the steps leading to the House of Black and White.

Just before this she has apparently sliced his femoral artery with a different knife, most likely a small, sharp one that could be easily palmed:

Instead she slid her finger down along the inside of his thigh. He gave a grunt. “Damn, be careful there, you — “

Mercy gave a gasp and stepped away, her face confused and frightened. “You’re bleeding.”

We know from ADwD that she is adept at palming small knives:

It took her three more days of watching before she found the way, and another day of practicing with her finger knife. Red Roggo had taught her how to use it, but she had not slit a purse since back before they took away her eyes.

[…]

she sharpened the steel on a whetstone until its edge glimmered silver-blue in the candlelight.

[…]

Last of all she palmed her finger knife.

[…]

Her blade flashed out, smooth and quick, one deep slash through the velvet and he never felt a thing.

At the outset of “Mercy” we witness her preparing to go to the theater:

Her boots were lumps of old brown leather mottled with salt stains and cracked from long wear, her belt a length of hempen rope dyed blue. She knotted it about her waist, and hung a knife on her right hip and a coin pouch on her left. Last of all she threw her cloak across her shoulders. It was a real mummer’s cloak, purple wool lined in red silk, with a hood to keep the rain off, and three secret pockets too. She’d hid some coins in one of those, an iron key in another, a blade in the last. A real blade, not a fruit knife like the one on her hip, but it did not belong to Mercy, no more than her other treasures did. The fruit knife belonged to Mercy. She was made for eating fruit, for smiling and joking, for working hard and doing as she was told.

Of note, she has a small, sharp knife on her hip (the fruit knife) and another “real blade” secreted in her cloak. This blade does not belong to Mercy, though the fruit knife does, distinctions of ownership we think are significant.

Arya has not been called Arya Stark in her own PoV since the Cat of the Canals chapter in AFfC. When she wakes up as the Blind Girl in ADwD, she is no longer called Arya by the Kindly Man, though she does occasionally recall that she was once called Arya Stark. Since becoming the Blind Girl, Arya has been a creature of the Faceless Men, playing their roles, learning their ways and obeying their rules. In fact, she initiates her exquisite slaying of Raff as Mercy, using Mercy’s fruit knife to make the first cut.

During the murder, Mercy guides Raff into asking her to carry him, just as Lommy did way back in ACoK (For the record, the Lommy & Raff killings have numerous other clear parallels beyond the scope of this essay)

“Walk?” His fingers were slick with blood. “Are you blind, girl? I’m bleeding like a stuck pig. I can’t walk on this.”

“Well,” she said, “I don’t know how you’ll get there, then.”

“You’ll need to carry me.”

See? thought Mercy. You know your line, and so do I.

“Think so?” asked Arya, sweetly.

Note the question “Are you blind, girl?” to which the answer is a clear “No.” This just might signify that Mercy is no longer a creature of the FM as of that moment, especially since when Raff says his “line” a moment later Mercy becomes Arya for the first time since Arya became the Blind Girl, and evidently uses the blade that “did not belong to Mercy” to complete the killing.

Back in AGoT Arya received a special gift from her brother Jon:

She giggled at him. “It’s so skinny.”

“So are you,” Jon told her. “I had Mikken make this special. The bravos use swords like this in Pentos and Myr and the other Free Cities. It won’t hack a man’s head off, but it can poke him full of holes if you’re fast enough.

[…]

“Needle!”

We see evidence of Needle being a relatively small blade when, after Arya recovers Needle at the Inn after the Hound kills Polliver, we get this description:

Hanging beside his dagger was a slimmer blade, too long to be a dirk, too short to be a man’s sword… but it felt just right in her hand.

And later on in AFfC:

Needle was too small to be a proper sword, it was hardly more than a toy.

So Needle could probably best be described as a “long, thin blade.” Fitting Needle into her mummers cloak wouldn’t be difficult given GRRM regularly does impossible things with swords (like people drawing greatswords over their shoulder) – and after all he’s already told us the blade was long.

Recall that after Arya trains with the Braavosi water dancer, Syrio Forel, Needle became an iconic part of her Stark identity.

Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell’s grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan’s stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow’s smile.

In her thoughts, Needle stands for her family, replacing her need for friends (“I don’t need any friends, so long as I have Needle”) and is her constant protection:

“She slid Needle out from under her cloak. The slender blade seemed very small and the dragons very big, yet somehow Arya felt better with steel in her hand.”

[…]

“She went back to sleep clutching Needle.”

[…]

“Needle was in her hand, though she did not remember drawing it”

What better blade to use when taking vengeance for her losses? Back in AFfC she hid it on the steps of the HoBaW:

She padded up the steps as naked as her name day, clutching Needle. Halfway up, one of the stones rocked beneath her feet. Arya knelt and dug around its edges with her fingers. It would not move at first, but she persisted, picking at the crumbling mortar with her nails. Finally, the stone shifted. She grunted and got both hands in and pulled. A crack opened before her.

“You’ll be safe here,” she told Needle. “No one will know where you are but me.” She pushed the sword and sheath behind the step, then shoved the stone back into place, so it looked like all the other stones. As she climbed back to the temple, she counted steps, so she would know where to find the sword again. One day she might have need of it. “One day,” she whispered to herself.

Between the similarities of description in the text, and the symbolism of Mercy becoming Arya Stark just before the blade appears, we think that the most likely conclusion is that the blade that kills Raff is none other than Needle. The blade sliding out of her sleeve could be the symbolic realization of Syrio Forel’s very first advice to her: